Ninth-Century Indian Chess

By John Ayer

Introduction

Al-‛Adlī, writing in the ninth century, remarks, It is
universally acknowledged that three things were produced from India, in which no
other country anticipated it, and the like of which existed nowhere else: the
book Kalīla
wa Dimna, the nine ciphers with which one can count to infinity, and
chess. He contrasts the game as played in India in his day with the
rules known to the Persians and Arabs (Shatranj).

Board

The board is eight squares by eight, all apparently alike.

Setup

The first and most obvious difference is in the set-up. The King stands
on one of the two central files, staring at the enemy King, and the Firzan
stands on the other central file, staring at the enemy Firzan. Two Rooks
stand on the c and f files, two Horses stand on the b and g files, and two
Elephants stand on the corner squares, on the a and h files. Pawns fill the
second rank.

Pieces

Pawns move one square forward, and capture one square diagonally forward. The Rooks
have the normal Rook's move, charging along any open rank or file, and the
Horses have the normal Knight's leap. The Elephants, however, do not have
the Alfil's leap; they leap to the
second square along the rank or file: the move of the Dabbabah.
The King moves one square in any direction, and the Firzan one square
diagonally; there is no special leap for the King.

Rules

Checkmate is a win. Stalemate, while legal, is a loss for the player
inflicting it. Isolation of the King is a victory, even if the winning
player's King could be isolated on the next move. This rule also obtained
in the Hejaz (the area around the holy cities of Mecca and Medina), but the rest
of the Moslem world at that time held that if the opponent could bare the other
King on the next move, the game was drawn. Al-‛Adlī was
surprised to find what his contemporaries called "the Medinese
Victory" the rule in India. There is no mention of perpetual check.

Comments

Well, Sam, I don't intend usually for my games to be played. I do for the sake of fun, not merely having fun in the process. I especially like having restrictions, such as a certain amount of spaces, as you can see from my 47-space games. When I create a game, I often create the board first. To me, the board is one of the most important catalysts for game ideas. For example, I have created a Jang Gi variant just from pondering upon a Fanorona board! Creating good games is merely a side effect to me, though I strive for playability.

You know, looking at how this game has regional variants makes me realize that chess is like language. Like languages, there is a thriving
conlang
community. In other words, we chess variant inventors are like people who create constructed (artifical) languages;
we spend a lot of time and effort making our variants, but, just as constructed languages have few or no speakers,
constructed chess variants have few or no players.

Like languages, many people are most comfortable learning just one variant (normally,
the standard 'FIDE'/'Mad Queen' variant), and mastering it. Like a language, learning
to play a variant well is a lot of work that most chess players are not willing to
invest time in doing.

The most popular Chess Variants are ones where we don't know who originally
'created' the variant; they just came in to being the way a natural
language comes in to being, and ended up dominating the world for cultural
reasons as much as for the quality of the variant itself.

It seems that in India there was a bit of differences from one region to another. That is not surprising. Today we are living in a world that always want to 'standardize' things... but when there where now papers, TV, telephone or any means of communication but the spreaded word or the occasional manuscript, things tended to get local 'colors'. Chess was not different. Only with Islam it first appeared a standard version of chess (in the west of course..)
On the same page of Murray where this account is given it also appears the movement of the Burmese (or silver general) piece but referig to the Punjab in India. There is now doubt that it was the ancestor of the moves on this local varieties.
The quest for the discovery of the first version of chess is becoming so much more intriguing... and fascinating. :-)

I have been asked for the pawn-promotion rule. My only source, al-Adli as quoted by Murray, does not mention promotion. He describes the rules he found in India by comparing them with the rules he knew in Arabia, and as he makes no mention of pawn promotion, I can only guess that it was the same as in shatranj: a pawn reaching the last rank is promoted to firzan.